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Issues Facing Missions Today 34: ‘Radicalized’ A
peculiar word, ‘radical’. The English
word really relates to the word ‘root’ (Latin, radix)—getting to the heart or root of what something truly
is. But we hear the word used
differently: someone who is ‘radical’ is ‘out there,’ ‘on the edge,’ even ‘dangerous’. The
word is now being used in the media’s phrase, ‘radical Islam.’ If someone commits murder as a Muslim the
Western press will say that this isn’t real
Islam but a radical form of
Islam. The person is said to have been ‘radicalized.’ The question is, ‘Is real Islam the opposite
of radical Islam, or is radical Islam real Islam?’ Are these radicals getting to the root of
their faith, or are they departing from it?
As far as politicians and the press are concerned, it would be terribly inconvenient
in a politically correct world to identify radical Islam with real Islam. So
much for confusing the word ‘radical’ with the opposite of its original
meaning. The
question I would li…

Issues
Facing Missions Today 33: Jettisoning the Leadership Paradigm for Ministry in
Africa
Three challenges to ministry posed by certain
concepts of leadership are: (1) ministry from a position of power; (2) elitism;
and (3) personal rule. The present post
examines these three points with respect to Africa through three authors. Clearly, certain people rise to positions of responsibility and have to exercise
certain duties in the course of their
ministry, but understanding this in terms of ‘leadership’ rather than
‘ministry’ seems to open Christian mission and ministry up to various
abuses. Perhaps, I would argue, it is
time to return to the simple notion of ‘ministry’ and drop the language of
‘leadership’ altogether.[1]Ministry
from a Position of Power
In 1990, Gottfried Osei-Mensah warned of a
connection between power and Christianity in Africa. He wrote,
The
entrance of the Gospel in Africa through the modern missionary movement
coincided with the spread of western colonial po…